Imagine that you go into your local hospital for a relatively minor procedure that is supposed to have you in and out overnight. But, you develop an infection that is life altering and months later you are still in the hospital fighting for your life. This is the nature of some antibiotic resistance bugs that kill over 77,000 people a year that acquired an infection while in the hospital.
For the first time infections in hospitals are killing more people every year than we lose in car wrecks.
Jim Brackeen went into the hospital for minor surgery to repair a torn achilles tendon. He left with a common hospital infection called pseudomonas. “They had me go 10 days, twice a day, for infusions of heavy doses of antibiotics,” said Brackeen, who lives in Clear Lake. “We’re not talking about something that’s going away.” His hospital bills have gone over $100,000.
As it is, you have a 1 in 25 chance of catching a deadly infection in a hospital.
I have known people that worked in areas of hospital maintenance departments and never directly in contact with patients. They were always sick with one thing or another, quit working there and did the same work in other buildings and have not been sick other than a seasonal head cold since.
Hospitals can be petri dishes of infectious germs.
Why more employees are not sick all the time, especially doctors and nursing staff, my guess is they just have better immune systems naturally or built up over time.